


Head Full Of Ghosts

by ChemFishee



Category: Torchwood
Genre: 2007 Fic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-17
Updated: 2013-11-17
Packaged: 2018-01-01 19:43:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1047835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChemFishee/pseuds/ChemFishee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She wondered if there was enough Retcon in the world to make this a terrorist attack. <br/>(June 2007)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Head Full Of Ghosts

**Author's Note:**

> Pre-series ficlet originally posted [here](http://chemfishee.livejournal.com/71986.html).)

Twenty-seven survivors. Twenty-seven out of the nearly nine hundred operatives, agents, employees, and support staff Torchwood One admitted to having. Suzie tried to work out the percentage in her head. Tried and failed. Dawn was breaking over the wharf, the sun’s rays catching along the water’s surface and reflecting at improbable angles. The fires had been put out by the time they arrived, but the air was still thick with smoke, choking those who had managed to make it out.

Suzie leaned against an abandoned emergency vehicle. The rescue workers, the real heroes, were inside, searching for bodies. She wondered if there was enough Retcon in the world to make this a terrorist attack. There were plenty of enemies of Harriet Jones for it to be a plausible cover story. They would not, however, be able to explain away the bodies partially encased in metal. The most sophisticated terrorist cells in the world still operated with suicide bombings and biological weapons and fear and empathy. They weren’t yet capable of making an army of metal men. Yet. All in good time.

Suzie rubbed her eyes. Her contacts had been in for forty hours already. She couldn’t remember the last thing she ate, although she was sure someone had pressed a stale bagel into her hand at some point. She didn’t remember what happened to it. The few winks of sleep she managed to catch had only made her nerves more jangled. She was running out of adrenaline, as was the rest of the first wave of the rescue effort. Suzie sagged harder against the metal of the truck, barely able to hold herself upright. She slipped down a few more millimetres, and suddenly she was sitting on the ground, her arse sore, her vision a little blurred, and her head pounding.

“Here.” A warm cup of something, something dark and rich and aromatic, was pressed into her hand. She inhaled deeply. Coffee. Good coffee. “Drink.” She obeyed and was rewarded as the slightly bitter but definitely strong liquid danced across her tastebuds. “Good?”

Suzie swallowed the mouthful, not wanting the sensation to end. “Perfect.” She took another sip, letting it warm her from the inside. She had neglected to realize that she was going numb from the cold. “Where’d you get this from?” Suzie cradled the cup in her hands, letting the feeling return to her fingers.

“I made it.”

She finally looked at the man sitting on the ground beside her. Tattered suit. A formerly crisp, vaguely white shirt rumpled and torn and bloody and more than a little filthy. She assumed there had been a tie at some point. Probably even a pocket square. And the little suspenders that held up socks. Suzie looked at his feet, shocked to find them encased in Wellies. “Damn good coffee,” she said before taking another sip.

“I know.” The accent was definitely Welsh, though it had been muted from some time spent in London. She could hear it in the way he rolled the vowels around his throat.

“What’s your name?”

“Ianto.”

“Were you in there?” A ridiculous question. But she was tired and hungry and cold and sore. The time for tact was later.

There was no reply, save for a lone tear trickling down a cheek unmarred by blemishes or wrinkles. A young recruit, probably snatched right out of uni. Suzie Costello didn’t know what else to say. No words or sympathy or comfort or support could erase whatever horror this Ianto had seen. She knew what would help, though. Because I could not stop for Death.

“Please don’t take away my memories of her,” he whispered into the light of the new day. She regretted ever considering the thought.


End file.
